This application claims priority from Korean Patent Application No. 2002-35410, filed on Jun. 24, 2002, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an alkaline lipase isolated from Vibrio metschnikovii RH530 N-4-8 and a gene encoding the same. The present invention also relates to a recombinant vector containing the gene, a transformed host cell transformed with the recombinant vector and a method of producing an alkaline lipase using the transformed host cell.
2. Description of the Related Art
An alkaline lipase hydrolyses triacylglycerol into glycerol and fatty acid at alkaline pH. Various microorganisms producing an alkaline lipase have been reported. Specifically, representative examples of such microorganisms include Pseudomonas, and Bacillus. These enzymes have been applied to industrial fields of detergents that necessitate hydrolysis of lipids under alkaline conditions.
Currently, lipases for commercially available detergents biochemically exhibit an optimal activity at weak alkaline pH, that is, at pH 8˜9, and are relatively rapidly inactivated in the presence of an anionic surfactant, e.g., LAS.
Thus, there is demand for lipases exhibiting an optimal activity at a higher pH level, e.g., at pH 10˜11, a high ratio of residual enzyme activity and high compatibility with surfactants.
In order to overcome problems with prior art, inventors of the present invention found out that Vibrio metschnikovii RH530 N-4-8 (on deposit at the Korean Collection for Type Culture (KCTC) with KFCC-11030 on Feb. 23, 1998), which is a strain producing protease for a detergent, as disclosed in Korean Patent laid-open Nos. 10-1996-0007772 and 10-1999-0084319, also produced a lipase. They intensively studied biochemical properties of the lipase, a gene encoding the lipase and its resistance to a surfactant and completed the present invention.